Ultimate Birthday Wishlist
I thought about not doing this this year.
After all, I'm fairly sure no one is reading this anymore.
But I know I'm reading it, and that counts.
And when I started the Birthday List (which later became a Birthday and Solstice list) in 2007, I wasn't sure anyone was reading then either.
The lists have changed and evolved over the years, with my own rules and stipulations about wishes. I guess this is a bit more of that.
There are things I want in the tradition of those lists, of course! Imagine if my favorite childhood authors and illustrators who were taken off the books by the company were allowed to finish them? I wanna see that lost episode of one of my childhood TV shows WITH OJ FUCKING SIMPSON that is hiding in the Disney vault!. For that matter, there's a lot of lost shit to see!. I want Instagram to stop being such a buggy mess that is also stealing data and doing all the evil shit Facebook does (same for Facebook being evil, also fuck Twitter). I want Tumblr to be a functional fucking website.
But you know what I want the most right now in this moment?
I want this year to radicalize people. I want the events of this year to radicalize people towards good and towards justice and fairness and to abolish these systems of oppression rather than just accepting them for the way they are and that there's nothing we can do.
During a pandemic which has seen the poor bear the brunt on so many levels, billionaires got even richer.
During peaceful protests about police accountability and brutality, police committed horrific acts of violence and even torture and murder and have gotten away with it.
A rich het cis white author gets to spew her vile transphobia on her enormous platform during not only Pride month, but during an epidemic of brutal murders of Black trans people.
LET THIS MOMENT RADICALIZE YOU FOR GOOD TO ACT AND FIGHT FOR JUSTICE.